Data from a New Haven study and a Philadelphia study of the emergency medical response provide the basis for assessing whether and to what extent clinicians or abused women are able to work through this dilemma to an intervention that can be reasonably expected to prevent or at least reduce ongoing battering. Clinicians in both studies failed to acknowledge abuse as a source of injury or other problems but rather reinterpreted women's experience in ways that are consistent with strictly medical views of behavior and disease. Findings from the New Haven study document a "battering syndrome" that includes a history of medical neglect, inappropriate medication, labeling, and punitive referrals and interventions that accompany the escalation of abusive injury and psychosocial problems. The Philadelphia study shows the way this process unfolds through individual encounters. 28 references